CARIIBBEAN BASIINS , TECTONIICS AND HYDROCARBONS , P HASE 1 THE INSTIITUTE FOR GEOPHYSIICS THE UNIIVERSIITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIIN http://www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/cbth/ October 25, 2006 Editor: Lisa Bingham ([email protected]) Vol 2. No. 1 IN THIS ISSUE British Gas–Stephen Babb Greeting 1 Special Thanks to Sponsors... 1 Additions to the CBTH Research Team 2 BHP– Neil Evans Meet our Company Representatives 2 Laura Jennings Past Meetings and Events 3 Tim O’Connor David Risch Data Distribution 5 Dave Widdoes Upcoming Meetings 5 British Petroleum Trinidad and Tobago– Contact Information 8 Teunis Heyn General Information 8 GREETING Chevron–Richard Parrish In this fourth edition of the Caribbean Basins, Tectonics, and Hydrocarbons (“CBTH”) Newsletter, we provide an update on our completed activities from ExxonMobil– May 2006 and offer an overview of our activities in the Jaime Buitrago, coming months. For those of you who are CBTH spon- Bolaji Famakinwa, sors, we hope over the past four months your group Ron Johnson, Randy Perkey, Robyn Schapiro has become comfortable using the CBTH web-based GIS database and website and that this resource is Newfield–Hank Woods benefiting your exploration efforts. Please let us know if you have suggestions or questions for use of the database. If your company is not a CBTH member but is interest- PDVSA–Leonardo Duerto ed in participating in the CBTH consortium, please take a few minutes to review our website (www.ig. utexas.edu/research/projects/cbth) where you can also download our three-year project proposal. Please feel Petrobras– free to contact us at [email protected] Ricardo Martinez Year One and Two payments received from all spon- sors. We appreciate the extra efforts of the representa- caribbeantives of all 11 companies basins, who insured tectonics that the pay- Rep soandl–Mo Etemadi, hydrocarbons Dewi Jones ments for Years One and Two were received by the annual deadline of September 1, 2006. For the third phase i year,university we will initiate the invoicing of process texas at an earlier institute for geophysics date (May 1, 2007) to allow you more time to arrange Shell–Amy Garbowicz, Sonya Punch, payment by the deadline of September 1, 2007. When Dave Stewart your payment is received you will receive your new password to access the data downloads on the web- site for Fall 2007 release date. Talisman–Kevin Meyer SPECIAL THANKS TO SPONSORS... ... who participated in our productive year-end meet- ing on September 1, 2006. 1 CARIBBEAN BASINS, TECTONICS AND HYDROCARBONS, PHASE 1 THE INSTIITUTE FOR GEOPHYSIICS THE UNIIVERSIITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIIN http://www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/cbth/ ADDITIONS TO THE CBTH RESEARCH TEAM data generated by CBTH is conveyed to the sponsoring companies through these individuals. Please let us Thanks to the funding support of our sponsors, the know if your company representative changes over the CBTH research team is growing. three-year course of this study. We have added two new first year master’s students, Our method of delivering analog data to the CBTH Eleine Vence and David Contreras. Eleine comes to us sponsors is to mail the data to the company represen- from Colombia where she worked with Occidental on tatives along with an invoice for what is contained in exploration studies in the Llanos and Magdalena the shipment. The contact signs and returns the basins. The subject of her proposed Master’s thesis is invoice to us by fax or mail. In that way, we can docu- subsurface structure and stratigraphy of the Guajira ment the person and the date that the data was area of northern Colombia. She is partially supported received at the company. The contact person also acts by the CBTH. David Contreras is from Venezuela where to disseminate our products to other people in their he is an employee with PDVSA (Venezuelan National respective companies along with representing the Oil Company). David is entirely supported by PDVSA. company at our annual year-end meetings in The subject of his Master’s thesis is the subsurface September. We greatly appreciate all the extra efforts structure and stratigraphy of the northern Maracaibo of the company representatives in keeping the project basin. This is an area of particular interest because of running smoothly! its known gas potential. BHP Billiton Petroleum, Inc. We have also hired a new post-doctoral researcher, Dr. Karen Tindale Hamed El-Mowafy. Hamed comes to us from Egypt [email protected] where he was an assistant professor of Geosciences at Houston, Texas the Department of Geology at Al-Azhar University in Cairo and worked as a part-time petroleum geoscien- British Gas T&T Limited tist with Apache Petroleum Corporation in Cairo. He Stephen Babb received his PhD from the University of Tulsa in 2003 [email protected] where his PhD dissertation topic was: “3-D seismic Port-of-Spain, Trinidad fluvial architecture of the basal middle Frio Formation, Stratton and Agua Dulce fields, south Texas.” British Petroleum Trinidad and Tobago Tim Bevan To learn more about Eleine, David, Hamed or any other [email protected] CBTH researcher, visit: http://www.ig.utexas.edu/ Port-of-Spain, Trinidad research/projects/cbth/proj_res.htm Chevron We are in the process of interviewing undergraduate Richard Parrish students for research positions. We hope to add two [email protected] undergraduate students to help us and to conduct Houston, Texas senior research projects in geology in the CBTH study area. ExxonMobil Exploration Company caribbeanSince we are part of thebasins, University of Texas,tectonics some of Pinarand Yilmaz hydrocarbons our most significant research “products” that you sup- [email protected] port with your annual payments are trained geoscien- phaseHouston, i Texas tistsuniversity at levels ranging from the ofundergraduate texas to grad- institute for geophysics uate, and through the post-doctoral level. Please let us Newfield Exploration know if you would like to have any of our personnel as Craig Davis summer interns or permanent employees at your com- [email protected] pany. Houston, Texas Petrobras MEET OUR COMPANY REPRESENTATIVES Fausto Machado [email protected] The individuals listed below have volunteered to serve Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as our main contacts for CBTH. All analog and digital 2 vol 2. no. 1 CARIBBEAN BASINS, TECTONICS AND HYDROCARBONS, PHASE 1 THE INSTIITUTE FOR GEOPHYSIICS THE UNIIVERSIITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIIN http://www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/cbth/ PDVSA In May, 2006, Paul Mann, Kirk McIntosh (http://www. Luisa Alcala ig.utexas.edu/people/staff/kirk/), UT MS-level graduate [email protected] student Justin Funk (http://www.ig.utexas.edu/people/ Leonardo Duerto students/funk/), and UTIG technician Steffen Saustrup [email protected] (http://www.ig.utexas.edu/people/staff/steffen/) collected Caracas, Venezuela single channel seismic data from Lakes Nicaragua and Managua in Nicaragua. Repsol Dewi Jones We used a small, portable system mounted on rented [email protected] ferry boats. The objective was to map active faults The Woodlands, Texas deforming the very young lake sediments. We also car- ried out coring to provide age constraints on the sedi- Shell ments. These data represent the first seismic data col- Dave Stewart lected on both lakes. The study was funded by the US [email protected] National Science Foundation and the University of Houston, Texas Texas Jackson School of Geosciences. http://www.ig. utexas.edu/research/projects/NicLakes/ Talisman “Geology of the area between Kim Safton Geological Conference: North and South America, with focus on the origin of [email protected] the Caribbean plate” Calgary, Canada Who: Paul Mann CBTH software support When: May 28-June 2 Landmark Graphics Where: Siguenza, Spain Connie Johnson [email protected] This International Research Conference was endorsed Houston, Texas by the Geological Societies of London, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela and operated by the Landmark Graphics is kindly providing our inter- Spanish Association of Geologists and Geophysicists pretative software. We have just completed our as part of their 25th anniversary celebratory program. second three-year software agreement. The meeting convenors included Dr. Keith James IVS3D (Honorary Departmental Fellow, Institute of Geography Bill McKernan and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth, UK), Dr. Dave [email protected] Roberts (BP Exploration Operating Company, Ltd., Fredericton, New Sunbury-on-Thames, United Kingdom), Dr. Maria Brunswick, Canada Antonieta Lorente Alonso (Professor of Advanced Stratigraphy, Central University of Venezuela, Caracas), We are also using an exciting visualization software and Dr. Bert Bally (Rice University, Houston, Texas). package called Fledermaus from IVS3D. We use this Forty people participated in the meeting and talks and caribbeanPC-based software tobasins, create interactive tectonics “flyovers” that posters and were presented hydrocarbons on all areas of the Caribbean. combine topography, bathymetry, surface geology andphaseMuch debatei ensued on the Pacific origin versus the in seismic reflection profiles. Fledermaus is simple to use situ tectonic models for Caribbean evolution. Paul anduniversity user-friendly. of texas instituteMann attended the for meeting andgeophysics presented three talks and one poster which are all available to our sponsors through the web site: PAST MEETINGS AND EVENTS http://www.ig.utexas.edu/ research/projects/cbth/SponsorsOnly/thes_diss.htm